353 pp. £13.50 ($28.00) W. Kendrick Pritchett, ,The Greek State at War Part III: Religion (1979) University of California Press.
✍ Scribed by John Ferguson
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1981
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 70 KB
- Volume
- 11
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0048-721X
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
I t is a curious feature ofhuman history that bright ideas and original discoveries seem to occur to different people at the same time: witness the differential calculus, the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the discover 3" of the planet Uranus. I know of no previous scholarly treatment of ancient religion and war, and now come two simultaneously, the work presently under review, and R. Lonis Guerre et Religion en Grace h 17poque classique (Paris 1979). I have not had a chance to do more than glance at this last. It has four sections. The first discusses the agon; the second contains omens, oracles, sacrifices, paeans, trophies, thanksgiving, offerings; the third deals with the war-gods in general (though not Ares, oddly) and Nike in particular; the fourth treats (rather well) victors and commemorations. Pritchett has twelve chapters: Religion and 9 Greek Warfare; Military Epiphanies; The Military Mantike; Miscellaneous Portents; War Festivals and the Calendar; Military Vows; Dedications of Armor; Captured Armor; Military Oracles: The Epitheiasmos, Cult Tax on *lilitary Pay; Religion for Discipline. The last three are very slight, and would be better as appendices. The books thus overlap, and at the same time complement one another.
Pritchett's strengths are plain. First, he has a sensible attitude to ancient religion, a capacity for empathy with ancient religious approaches, not always found among scholars. Second, his mastery of the sources, literary, epigraphic and archaeological is, so far as I can see, complete and total, Third, his critical interpretation is perceptive and hard to fault. His magisterial authority may be illustrated by a passage on the variability of the Attic calendar (pp. 164-6) whereby he is able to correct scholars as distinguished as H. W. Parke and E. R. Dodds (and I must confess caused me to revise my own views). Fourth, he quotes a large number of texts in translation, and summarizes others sensibly. This is both an interpretative work and a collection ofpfimary sources.